


Young and Beautiful

by diedofennui



Category: Hannibal (TV), The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: Adultery, Angst, Gin and Tonics, Hannibal is Not a Cannibal, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Jazz - Freeform, Longing, M/M, Magical Realism, Possibly Unrequited Love, Swimming Pools, World War I, flightly frustrating gorgeous Will, naive idealistic Hannibal, suspenders
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-06 22:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4238778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diedofennui/pseuds/diedofennui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A 1920s AU loosely based on The Great Gatsby, both the original work and the 2013 film. Jazz and grand parties, suspenders tugged off in dark corners, yellow cars...</p>
<p>"His appearance in New York's society pages had been a slow slither that drew little attention until he had everyone’s attention at once. In watching a fireworks show, one does not crawl through to crowd to seek the source of the fire, nor did New York’s swelling mass of the carefree young and the careless old seek out Lecter’s accelerant. He was just there, and he was beautiful."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Pool

**Author's Note:**

  * For [drinkbloodlikewine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/gifts), [whiskeyandspite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/gifts).



The phone rang – a discordant ring of such beauty that Hannibal never needed music in his life again. There would never be a sky as blue as this one, a moment of such clarity.

The pressure in his chest expanded with a “pop” and his only thought was, “Yes…”

\------

 

~ Two months earlier ~

 

There is a serene instant of frozen space that exists in the moment between jumping from the board and landing in the pool that Hannibal cherishes above all the other moments in his day. It is a moment in time in which both the past and the future are entwined, tendrils of both twist together and create a world in which certainty has no place, and to pause here forever would give the jumper an eternity to imagine every possible outcome. 

The blue splash on the other side of possibility is always a surprise. One day the arc may reverse and Hannibal would find himself back on the board, looking into the amorphous blue of the sky reflected under his feet. Then he would know that it is possible, that he could reverse the sweep of his life and stare up at a sky in which the war had never happened, in which Will had always been at his side, one in which the bullet of love had pierced his heart and traveled through space into Will’s. Memory would be a needless thing in that place, no need to seek what you already have. 

Beneath the water Hannibal listens to the whump, whump of his heart and imagines love’s bullet encased safely inside, pumping its lead through his veins. 

\------

 

The choice of Italian tile on the tiered patio had been argued against. Did he want his guests slipping on the wet surface and drowning in alcohol and chlorinated water? Questionable stuff that chlorine, likely to kill us all without the damn tile. Did he intend to end his days floating motionless in his own swimming pool, all for his ridiculous aesthetic demands?

“Perhaps I do my friend…perhaps I do. People come to my parties for an escape. What better escape than to die surrounded by friends, the swell of music, gin-mad faces peering down at your last breath? No, no, I only jest, please, go ahead with the tile. I will warn my guests of their peril and consider my own mortality as well, with every swim, I assure you. Thank you so much…” 

Lecter had that sort of charm about him – a dismissive sort of joviality. He expressed just how delighted he was by your presence, a lean in, a glint of eye that told of the immense value of your friendship, followed by that blessing of dismissal. Just that. You had the feeling of being vastly important, but a bit of a nuisance all at once. It drew people like fireflies to his charismatic sunset. Though his sunset, at that moment, had yet to be imagined. It was his sunrise that people sought. 

 

His appearance in New York’s society pages had been a slow slither that drew little attention until he had everyone’s attention at once. In watching a fireworks show, one does not crawl through the crowd to seek the source of the fire, nor did New York’s swelling mass of the carefree young and the careless old seek out Lecter’s accelerant. He was just there, and he was beautiful. 

Occasionally, the thrill-seeking men of the press with cameras would disperse themselves amongst the bushes surrounding the Lecter mansion. Everyone who was anyone and many who were nothing had been allowed inside Lecter’s home during the gross spectacle of his parties. No one went inside when the party had crawled away retching and the high heels had been plucked out of the swimming pool. Naturally then, the aftermath was what the people desired, and the interim, not the parties, and not the jazz, and not the tie-tacks gleaming on shirt fronts. They dearly wanted the absence of glory. 

The resolution of this desire seemed to be the one gift that Hannibal Lecter would not bestow on the sweaty faces camped in foliage outside his gates, nor upon their readers. Lemonade would be carried out at precisely noon, never by Lecter himself of course, but by an uninterested manservant with ponderous whiskers that spoke of a forgotten age of great dignity and more personal resolve. It was distributed without comment, and the silver cart pushed stalwartly back inside, nary a squeak of wheels to give hint of Lecter himself, presumably home, but perhaps not, perhaps he was only at home amongst the sparkle and gin, and in its absence became nothing at all.

We ought never to have known. It would have been kinder, but less elegant, less poetic. 

Whisperings in corners that “it would have been better if…” 

Solemn noddings that “truly, we had always known…” 

And perhaps we had.


	2. Bright Resplendent Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Will Graham’s love of high places would follow him wherever he lead, from peach trees, to pitched roofs with blond soldiers, to clock towers at 2 a.m., and finally to the highest pinnacle of all, society’s terrible peak, from which the only escape is to jump, finally, back to the earth and perhaps under it."

William had always done everything that his family expected of him, which was why he was permitted the occasional dalliance of the unexpected sort. In his first year at university, he was reprimanded quite sternly by the Dean for “public drunkenness.” It came to the attention of Mr. and Mrs. Graham some years later that their darling pet had stripped naked and perched triumphantly on the square’s clocktower, bottle in hand, a jury of his peers far below his feet laughing skyward with scandalous pleasure and blush-bright cheeks. 

He had run away from home 3 times before the age of 17. Once at 5 when he’d resolved to live in a peach tree on the far side of the grounds. He was discovered within 16 hours of his flight, asleep on a branch like a tiny wildcat, sticky with peach juice and hypnotized by cicadas into a blameless sleep like the feral creature that he was.

His next escapist foray was at age 9, and in this he fared better. He had gone as far as Akron, Ohio with a group of traveling circus folk, passing himself off as an unfortunate by tossing one of his shoes, smearing tar on his seersucker trousers, and affecting a runny nose. He was accepted at once as a “Schneckchen” and whisked away to help the ladies lace their corsets and to sit astride a poor lion who pined for warmer climes. William was asleep once again, burrowed in a mound of satin with Greta, when the hired detective found him and sent him scratching back to Long Island.

The final escape of Will’s life, since which he has found life entirely inescapable, was shortly after his 16th birthday in the early summer of 1918. Mrs. Graham prided herself especially on her charity toward “troubled” boys. Incidentally, she failed to see the irony of her selection as her little darling snuck gin from daddy’s cabinetry. Mrs. Graham prided herself so much that she remarked on her charitable nature often, with great passion, and always in large crowds of the well-to-do who feigned interest poorly, but with great dedication toward the feigning. 

“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”

Hope crept in unseen on the wings of charity that evening, nudging Hannibal toward William with a fatal faith in love conquering all that the best and worst of us are guilty of from time to time. (Those in between being sadly innocent.) The hope this night was perched, unintentionally, on the heart of one of fifty-six “troubled” young men. Recently having completed their military training and soon to be shipped overseas to what would become The Great War, the tight-lipped, uniformed mass arrived in a bus resplendent of lye soap and fear sweat. 

“Because truly, who else but young boys from broken homes go into a thing like the army dear? These poor dolls are barely older than our William. No parents to their names. Surely parents wouldn’t let their boys go and do a thing like the army dear?” 

Fifty-six pairs of overly large boots shuffled into the Graham household, and fifty-five pairs stomped out 3 hours later, distrusting overly large houses and brightly-attired matrons the rest of their days, which for most of them, was not very long at all.

The fifty-sixth pair of boots were not worn again for 12 years, at which point they were discovered in the Graham’s attic, not privy to the fate of their former owner, who had discarded them in haste to follow the bare feet of a curly-headed boy onto the window sill and up to the roof. 

Will Graham’s love of high places would follow him wherever he lead, from peach trees, to pitched roofs with blond soldiers, to clock towers at 2 a.m., and finally to the highest pinnacle of all, society’s terrible peak, from which the only escape is to jump, finally, back to the earth and perhaps under it.

On this lesser pinnacle of slate tile, Will whispered Thoreau in Hannibal’s ear, that all good things are wild and free and that the only remedy for love is to love more, and they breathed secrets in to one another’s hair until the sun began to rise. For the fourteen hours of daylight that followed, the troubled boy sat stupefied next to his boots in the attic, listening to the wild creature one floor below, who was bundling Transcendentalist poetry and his feather bedspread into a trim leather satchel. Nearly a man of the world, Will sensibly palmed his daddy’s billfold, full of enough currency to be impressive without risking ostentation. In the penultimate moment before their flight, a horse was considered to aide in escape, but ultimately discarded as overly dramatic.

Two hours of dusty strides later, the bright, resplendent things caught the train from the second to the nearest station, dressed in cream pinstripes and blue respectively, jaunty boaters atop, the heaviness of Hannibal’s boots transfigured into wingtips that gave him leave to fly into his iridescent future with the beautiful and damned creature at his side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Schneckchen: a German term of endearment meaning "little snail"
> 
> "All good things are wild and free," is quoted from Henry David Thoreau's essay "Walking," and "There is no remedy for love but to love more" is quoted from Thoreau's personal journals.
> 
> “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” 1 Corinthians 13:13, King James Translation
> 
> "The Beautiful and Damned," is another novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of "The Great Gatsby."


	3. The Plunge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The two figures that disembarked from that train car near sunset were sleepy and sated, stomachs filled with orange sponge cake, sticky Mary Jane candies, and Coca Cola. And for one week the soldier and society’s beautiful darling hid away, bedded in their secret den like foxes, surrounded by the heady warm scent of fallen pine needles, damp with summer sweat and lake water.

It did not take long for the rosy-cheeked boys to be discovered, a fact that would cause Hannibal to wonder, many years later, whether that had been Will’s design all along. Fickle wild creature. Dangerous to love, dangerous to touch, even in passing, knowing that love touches them not at all. 

Though perhaps it is not in our sphere of experience to say for certain what Will felt? To do so, we ourselves would have to be one of those rare creatures that could run alongside him through life, not a bit tamed. 

You may take that chance if you will.

\---

The summer hideaway of the Grahams' is where we, and soon enough the rest of the world, find the boys. The cabin was one that the Grahams had utilized in seasons past to "return to the land" on August holidays. Such returnings were always brief, more delicate near-landings in truth, and followed always by immediate retreats. 

In those interludes of years past, Will would, in a matter of minutes, manage either to eat an inchworm perched on a blackberry, or to fall headlong into the pulpy green murk along the edge of the lake. His parents would swiftly regain their sense of propriety and spirit their feral toddler back into the white Rolls Royce. Will, in whatever filthy state he had managed to achieve, would be placed, with much curling of lip, on a picnic blanket in the back to avoid staining the interior with his heathenry. 

 

It was those memories that Will sought to repaint in vivid color with the solemn-eyed boy.

The two figures that disembarked from that train car near sunset were sleepy and sated, stomachs filled with orange sponge cake, sticky Mary Jane candies, and Coca Cola. And for one week the soldier and society’s beautiful darling hid away, bedded in their secret den like foxes, surrounded by the heady warm scent of fallen pine needles, damp with summer sweat and lake water. They stretched out naked on boulders, trousers thrown over low branches, hats tipped over sun-pink noses and sticky fingers laced together. They kissed until their lips were moist raspberries, tongues exploring and limbs trembling. Will kissed as if he never would again, Hannibal as if they would kiss always, eyes wide in surprise and worship, their bodies electric. 

The boys were discovered in limbo, between the earth and the sky, asleep in the bottom of a rowboat. Their bodies were curled together like cats, Hannibal behind, nose tucked beside Will’s ear, in that sweet hollow that smelled of boy and home and fierce adoration. A bottle of raspberry lambic was still in Will’s loose fist, fingers twitching in animal dreams as he slept. 

The boy's hired captors paused only a moment to study the tableau before them, each man quickly stifling his own intake of breath at the pastel vision in the bottom of the boat. One man remembered his own first love as a boy of twelve, and swallowed the taste of apple-flavored kisses from 40 years earlier. Another wished he had stayed in Georgia, where his plump, calico-clad grandmother bottled raspberry cordial every September.

When we become fully matured human animals, we learn to swallow down our whimperings and to allow only our growls and barks to speak our uncertainty. That is just what these men did; gulped down their hearts in the time it took their lower eyelids to twitch in remembrance. 

Hannibal was grasped by the hair, eyes still shut with the vestiges of sleep, and then wide with shock as the first man’s fist (apple kisses still in his mouth), made swift contact with the boy’s nose, and over he fell, water and chill and iron filling his mouth.

Will woke with the splash, half-dreaming of catching fish with his paws, and bolted to a crouch when Hannibal's firm press went missing. 

The men try to soothe him with palms extended, shushing him instinctively as he claws around the boat, searching, realizing that the splash had been Hannibal's. They lunge for him as he scrambles over the side, his foot grasped and quickly let go when it contacts teeth.

Will hardly takes a breath before he joins Hannibal in the jade darkness beneath the murk. The holes that two bodies have made in the algae permit twin rays of light to penetrate with the little lovers, and Will seeks between the shafts for Hannibal's shape. 

Only seconds pass between Hannibal's splash and Will's pursuit, and their fingers tangle in only seconds more. Both of them are desperate for air, but neither make to rise to the surface, knowing perhaps that their moment between the worlds will be the last time they ever float alone together before life’s madness intervenes.

And it always does. 

\---

That initial great splash was the first of three in Hannibal's lifetime. In this one he was the pursued, his fierce protector joining him in the depths. In the second he will do the pursuing, his plunge icy and purposeful. And in the last?

We will decide for ourselves whether he fell alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable;  
> I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."  
> \- Song of Myself, Walt Whitman
> 
> "I sing the body electric,  
> The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,  
> They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,  
> And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul."  
> \- I Sing the Body Electric, Walt Whitman


End file.
